Biden's attempts to diversify federal courts can't come fast enough
Last week, President Joe Biden rekindled the priority of diversifying the federal judiciary. Announcing his first slate of nominations, President Biden nominated a diverse group of 11 candidates. Three were African-American women nominated for appeals courts and another was the first federal judge in U.S. history who is a Muslim. And, aside from race and ethnicity, Biden drew from public defenders, military judges and other public servants - a broader range of legal expertise and life experience than did his predecessors, who tended to favor prosecutors and partners from white-shoe law firms.
In stark contrast, of President Donald Trump's 234 appointments to the federal bench, only 4 percent were Black and 4 percent were Hispanic, while 13.4 percent of the U.S.population are Black and 18.5 percent are Hispanic or Latino. And 76 percent of Trump's appointments were men. In this era where we find ourselves on the defensive about the values of pluralism and equality, such troubling demographics raise the risk of a judiciary that reflects the values of the past rather than one that is capable of meeting the needs of today.
One of Biden's picks, Candace Jackson-Akiwumi, will become the only Black woman on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting among 11 judges. This move echoes history. Although the first Black man was appointed to the federal appeals bench by President Truman in 1949, it was not long ago that President Clinton integrated the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit with the appointment of Roger Gregory in 2000. Until that historic moment, the all-white circuit made decisions that affected the lives of more Black Americans than any other circuit. Facing Republican opposition, President Clinton used a recess appointment to do so and President Bush later wisely renominated him to the post.
When testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, some judicial nominees like to portray their role as akin to an umpire calling balls and strikes, as Chief Justice John Roberts famously said. Despite these professions of neutrality, however, study after study shows that a decision maker's background matters. Indeed, with coauthors, one of us has conducted a survey experiment exploring 18 police investigative practices, such as obtaining records of online purchases or searching the trunk of your car. White Americans were substantially less likely to find that the police violated reasonable expectations of privacy. The finding is not surprising given that, for centuries, white and non-white Americans have had vastly different experiences with policing. The social science literature regarding the effects of race on judicial decisions is complex, but studies have shown that it matters, especially for cases where race is salient.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-s-attempts-to-diversify-federal-courts-can-t-come-fast-enough/ar-BB1fmfGa
